MODULE 2

LITERATURE REVIEW AND TECHNICAL

READING .
Agenda
• New and Existing Knowledge
• Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art Bibliographic Databases
• Web of Science
• Google and Google Scholar
• Effective Search: The Way Forward
• Introduction to Technical Reading
• Conceptualizing Research,
• Critical and Creative Reading,
• Taking Notes While Reading,
• Reading Mathematics and Algorithms,
• Reading a Datasheet.
• The primary goal of literature review is to know the use of content/ideas/approaches in the literature to

correctly identify the problem that is vaguely known beforehand, to advocate a specific approach adopted to

understanding the problem, and to access the choice of methods used.

• It also helps the researcher understand clearly that the research to be undertaken would contribute something

new and innovative.

• The quality of such review can be determined by evaluating if it includes appropriate breadth and depth of the

area under study, clarity, rigor, consistency, effective analysis.

 New and Existing Knowledge
• New knowledge in research can only be interpreted within the context of what is already known, and cannot exist
without the foundation of existing knowledge.

• In this chapter, we are going to look at how that foundation of knowledge needs to be constructed so that our new
knowledge is supported by it.

• The new knowledge can have vastly different interpretations depending on what the researcher’s background, and
one’s perception of that new knowledge can change from indifference to excitement (or vice versa), depending on
what else one knows.

• The significance can normally be argued from the point of view that there is indeed an existing problem and that it
is known by looking at what already exists in the field. The existing knowledge is needed to make the case that there
is a problem and that it is important.
• One can infer that the knowledge that is sought to be produced does not yet exist by
describing what other knowledge already exists and by pointing out that this part is
missing so that what we have is original.
• To do this, one again needs the existing knowledge: the context, the significance, the
originality, and the tools.
• Where does this existing knowledge come from? Normally, one finds this knowledge
by reading and surveying the literature in the field that was established long ago and
also about the more recent knowledge which is in fact always changing.
• With this foundation in place, the new knowledge that one will make will be much
more difficult to challenge than without that strong foundation in place which is
ensured with lots of references to the literature.
• Textbooks contain the older established knowledge and the research papers the newer work.

• Reading the textbooks on one’s topic provide the established knowledge and the background to be
able to read the newer work usually recorded in the research papers.

• Reading a textbook is not too difficult for it is written as a teaching instrument, and the author of the
textbook normally starts from the basics and take the reader, through everything that one needs to be
able to understand that topic.

• This is not at all the case with a research paper where the goal is normally to present a small piece of
new knowledge, and that new knowledge will not have stood the test of time in the same way as the
knowledge in a textbook would have.
• The research paper is written for other researchers out on the edge of
knowledge and it assumes that the reader already knows a lot in that field.

• A researcher may find oneself continually going back to other sources to try and
interpret what is going on in a particular research paper.

• It can be difficult to find the right work to read, but the objective with all this
reading and learning is to be able to get the knowledge that one needs to build
the foundation.
• The review process must explain how a research item builds on another one .

• This is because useful research should elucidate how and why certain technical development took place, so that

it is easy for the reader to comprehend why the present talk is being undertaken, and a good literature survey

would provide a convincing under to that question.

• An effective review of literature ensures a firm foundation for advancing knowledge, facilitates theoretical

growth, eliminates as areas that might be of interest, and opens new avenues of possible work.

• An efficient literature review is centered around concepts and not authors .

• Generally, a good literature survey is the first expectation of a supervisor from the
research student, and when done well can create a good impression that the state of art in
the chosen field is well understood.
• Simple rules for writing an effective literature review are important for a research scholar,
are provided.
• A good literature review would not draw hasty conclusions and look into the individual
references to determine the underlying causes/assumptions/mechanisms in each of them
so as to synthesize the available information in a much more meaningful way.
• A literature review should be able to summarize as to what is already known from the
state of the art, detail the key concepts and the main factors or parameters and the
underlying relationships between those, describe any complementary existing
approaches, enumerate the inconsistencies or shortcomings in the published work,
identify the reported results that are inconclusive or contradictory, and provide a
compulsive reason to do further work in the field.
A good literature survey is typically a two-step process as enumerated below:

(i) Identify the major topics or subtopics or concepts relevant to the subject under

consideration.

(ii) Place the citation of the relevant source (article/patent/website/data, etc.) in

the correct category of the concept/topic/subtopic (with the help of a , for example).
• It could be that as one is reading and comes across something that one considers to be very important
for one’s work, a core principle or a description of something that just sounds really good, and one is
excited to have found it.

• Naturally, one highlights that section or underlines it, or put an asterisk in the margin, so that one
could come back to it later.

• Effectively, one is saying that it is important and hence the marking so as not to forget it.

• After having marked or highlighted the section, it is suggested that the paper be put away or the book
be closed.

• Then one should write about the highlighted part without copying it.
• .
• As one writes about why one thinks that part is important and what it contains, one is automatically

changing it and making it fit into one’s foundation in the way that makes sense.

• There are shaping and crafting of that piece of knowledge to fit where one needs it to be.

• To build the knowledge foundation, one needs to be reading and learning continually.

• But that is not enough, one also needs to be writing about what one has read.

• A comprehensive literature survey should methodically analyze and synthesize quality archived work,

provide a firm foundation to a topic of interest and the choice of suitable research methodologies, and

demonstrate that the proposed work would make a novel contribution to the overall field of research
 Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art
• After collecting the sources, usually articles, intended to be used in the literature review, the researcher
is ready to break down each article and identify the useful content in it, and then synthesize the
collection of articles (integrate them and identify the conclusions that can be made from the articles as
a group) [5].
• A literature survey grid of N topics and M sources is shown below to help crystallize the information
in different categories.
• A researcher should analyze the relevant information ascertained in Table 2.1 by undertaking the
following steps:

(i) Understanding the hypothesis

(ii) Understanding the models and the experimental conditions used

(iii) Making connections

(iv) Comparing and contrasting the various information

(v) Finding out the strong points and the loopholes.

• It is always good to be suspicious of the claims made in the sources that have been thoroughly reviewed,
especially in the case of all claims.
• If one is amenable to easily accept whatever is available in the literature, one may find it difficult to go
beyond it in one’s own work and may also fail to carefully analyze with a suspicious bent of mind one’s own
results subsequently.
• GOAL (LS): to bring out something new to work on through the identification of unsolved issues,
determine the problems in the existing models or experimental designs, and present a novel idea and
recommendations.
• No matter where one gets the available information, one needs to critically evaluate each resource that the
researcher wishes to cite.
• This methodology analyzes available materials to determine suitability for the intended research.
• Relying on refereed articles published in scholarly journals or granted patents can save the researcher a
lot of time.
Here are a few criteria that could help the researcher in the evaluation of the information under study:

Authority: What are the author’s credentials and affiliation? Who publishes the information?

Accuracy: Based on what one already knows about the topic or from reading other sources, does the

information seem credible? Does the author cite other sources in a reference list or bibliography, to support

the information presented?

Scope: Is the source at an appropriate comprehension or research level?

There are other criteria to consider as well, such as currency, objectivity, and purpose. It is important to ensure

that the search question is neither too narrow nor too broad.
 Bibliographic Databases

• “Bibliographic databases” refer to “abstracting and indexing services” useful for collecting citation-related information

and possibly abstracts of research articles from scholarly literature and making them available through search.

• Performing simultaneous searches through such large databases may allow researchers to overtly rely on any one

database and be limited by the intrinsic shortcoming of any one of them for quality research [6].

• A researcher should be able to quickly identify the databases that are of use in the idea or problem that one wishes to

explore.

• In this section, we present some details about a few of the popular bibliographic databases most sought after by

engineering researchers, but do not attempt to provide exhaustive details.

 WEB OF SCIENCE
• Includes multiple databases, as well as specialized tools.

• It is a good search tool for scholarly materials requiring institutional license and allows the researcher to search in a particular
topic of interest, which can be made by selection in fields that are available in drop down menu such as title, topic, author,
address, etc.

• The tool also allows sorting by number of citations (highest to lowest), publication date.

• Put quotes around phrases, add more keywords, or use the “Refine Results” panel on the left to narrowdown the search
by keyword, phrases in quotation marks, type of material such as peer-reviewed journal articles, date, language, and more.

• Expanding the search results is possible by looking for alternate word endings, breaking the search concepts down,
thinking of alternate search terms (including scientific names if applicable) and connecting them with OR, and using the
database’s features for finding additional references.

• “Cited reference search” option enables a researcher to trace articles which have cited a formerly published paper.

• Using this element, it is possible to find how a familiar idea has been applied, improved, or extended subsequently.
• A structured search like this that enables narrowing and refining what one is looking
for is effective to ensure that the results throw up relevant sources and time spent in
studying those is likely to be well utilized.

• Based on the researcher’s need the search result can be broadened or narrowed down
using the built-in fields provided in this website.

• When clicked on any of the search results, this website provides the title of the paper,
authors, the type of journal, volume, issue number and year of publication,
abstract, keywords, etc., so that the researcher has enough information to decide if it
is worthwhile to acquire the full version of the paper.
 Google and Google Scholar
• Google is a great place to start one’s search when one is starting out on a topic.
• It can be helpful in finding freely available information, such as reports from governments,
organizations, companies, and so on.
Limitations of Google
(i) It’s a “black box” of information. It searches everything on the Internet, with no quality control—one
does not know where results are coming from.
(ii) There are limited search functionality and refinement options.

Limitations of Google scholar

1. Some of the results are not actually scholarly. An article may look scholarly at first glance, but is not a
good source upon further inspection.
2. It is not comprehensive. Some publishers do not make their content available to Google Scholar.
3. There is limited search functionality and refinement options.
There are search operators that can be used to help narrow down the results. These help
one find more relevant and useful sources of information. Operators can be combined
within searches. Here are some basic ones that one can use:
(i) OR
Broadens search by capturing synonyms or variant spellings of a concept.
Example: Synchronous OR asynchronous will find results that have either term present.
(ii) Brackets/Parentheses ( )—Gather OR’d synonyms of a concept together, while
combining them with another concept. Example: RAM (synchronous OR
asynchronous).
(iii) Quotation marks “ ”—Narrow the search by finding words together as a phrase, instead
of separately.

Example: RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas Instruments”.

(iv) Site—limits the search to results from a specific domain or website. This operator is
helpful when searching specific websites such as the BC government, which is

Example: RAM(synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas Instruments” site:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

(v) Filetype—limits the search to results with a specific file extension one could look for
pdf’s, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and so on.

Example: RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas Instruments” site:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org, filetype: pdf.
• The Search Tools button at the top of the Google results gives you a variety of
other options, such as limiting the results by date.

• There are other operators and tools that one can use in Google and Google
Scholar.

Google is but one search tool a researcher can use—it is not the only one!
• It can be hard to sift (examine thoroughly) through all the results in Google or Google Scholar, especially if

the intent is to find scholarly resources from a specific subject area.

• To find the best resources on a topic, one should search in academic databases, in addition to Google.

• Databases provide access to journal articles and conference proceedings, as well as other scholarly

resources.

• One gets more relevant and focused results, because they have better quality control and search

functionality.

• One should choose a database based on subject area, date coverage, and publication type. Interfaces vary

between databases, but the search techniques remain essentially the same.